1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic sample analyzer for analyzing urine, blood etc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, various methods are known with respect to measurement of, for example, sugar, protein, or occult blood etc. in urine. In one of the methods, which is widely put to practical use, a plurality of elongated sheetlike sticks each having a plurality of reagent portions are accommodated in a cassette, the sticks are taken out of the cassette one by one such that the reagent portions of each stick are dipped in the sample (urine) and reaction at the reagent portions are subjected to color comparison.
Automatic removal devices for taking the above described sticks out of the cassette are known, for example, from Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 49-77693, No. 63-252250 etc.
In these devices disclosed in the above publication, a removal mechanism is constructed together with a cassette, therefore only one kind of stick accommodated in a single cassette can be taken out of the cassette by the single removal mechanism.
Meanwhile, there are various combinations of examination items of the sample. Therefore, in an automatic sample analyzer using the above described automatic removal devices, unnecessary items are analyzed in certain cases, thereby resulting in economic loss. To avoid the loss, it can be thought to provide a plurality of cassettes, which accommodate different kind of sticks, corresponding to each combination of examination items, and a plurality of the removal devices corresponding to each cassette. However, in this case, a drawback is that the removal mechanism becomes complicated in its construction and expensive.